Germany Opportunity Card Requirements and Documents

The Opportunity Card, or Chancenkarte in German, lets people from outside the EU move to Germany to look for work before they have a job offer. Two different routes lead to it, and they have different conditions. Most of the confusion around this card comes from mixing them up.

This guide separates the routes, puts each condition next to the document that proves it, and ends with the list of documents a German mission asks you to upload. Everything here is checked against the German Residence Act and the federal portals, with the source linked beside the claim so you can read it yourself.

If you came here looking for Germany’s job seeker visa, start with what replaced it and which route fits you, which sorts the routes by what you already hold before you read the conditions below.

What the card actually is

The Opportunity Card is a residence permit for looking for work in Germany, written into the German Residence Act (Aufenthaltsgesetz). You can also use it to look for a measure that gets a foreign qualification recognised in Germany.

While you hold it you may work an average of up to 20 hours a week, and you may do trial work of up to two weeks at a time with an employer. The first card is issued for up to a year. If you find qualified employment during that year, you apply in Germany for the residence permit that matches the job, or for an extension of the card for up to two more years, which needs a contract or a binding job offer and the Federal Employment Agency’s agreement.

The card is not a work visa and not a promise of one. It buys you time in the country to find the job that leads to a different permit.

Which of the two routes applies to you

There are two ways to qualify, and you only need one of them.

Route 1, the skilled-worker route. You already hold a German vocational qualification or degree, or a foreign one that has been fully recognised in Germany as equivalent. German law calls such a person a Fachkraft, a skilled worker. On this route there is no points table and no language requirement.

Route 2, the points route. Your qualification is real and state-recognised where you earned it, but it has not been recognised as equivalent in Germany. You then have to meet a qualification condition, a language condition, and score at least six points.

So the first question is not “how many points do I have?” It is “has a German body already declared my qualification equivalent?” If the answer is yes, the points table never applies to you, and the federal portal for skilled workers from abroad keeps the two routes apart in the same way.

Conditions that apply on both routes

Whichever route you use, these hold.

A valid passport, a secure livelihood, and no reason for refusal. These are the Residence Act’s general conditions for a residence title, summarised in the federal “At a Glance” leaflet. “Secure livelihood” is a defined term rather than a loose one: it means you can cover your living costs, health insurance included, without public money.

Money for the time you are asking for. See the money section below.

Health insurance from the day you enter. This follows from the same definition of a secure livelihood, and the certificate is a separate upload in both the federal questions and answers page and the document list of the German Missions in India. The usual form is an incoming policy covering the period the visa covers.

If you are already in Germany, a first Opportunity Card is possible only if you already hold a residence title from the relevant chapters of the Act. A tourist stay does not convert into one.

Route 1 conditions: a recognised qualification

You need one of these.

• A vocational qualification or degree that you obtained in Germany.
• A foreign qualification that has been fully recognised in Germany as equivalent.

For a foreign degree, recognition is usually shown through anabin, the database of the education ministries. A usable entry, in the wording the German mission in India uses, has the degree rated entspricht or gleichwertig, meaning it corresponds or is equivalent, and the institution rated H+. If your degree or your university is not in anabin with those ratings, you apply to the Central Office for Foreign Education (ZAB) for a Statement of Comparability, which is a paid assessment of the degree.

For a foreign vocational qualification, full recognition means a recognition notice from the German body responsible for that occupation. The federal Recognition in Germany portal is where that procedure starts, and it tells you which body is responsible for your occupation.

On this route you do not have to prove any language level. The federal advice is still to learn German, for the plain reason that you are going to Germany to be interviewed and hired.

Route 2 conditions: qualification, language, six points

Three conditions have to be met together. Points alone are not enough, and neither is language alone.

A qualification that counts. Three kinds are accepted. One is a foreign vocational qualification that is state-recognised in the country where you earned it and required at least two years of training. The others are a state-recognised foreign university degree and a category A qualification from a German Chamber of Commerce Abroad (AHK) that meets the German Vocational Training Act requirements. You must have this confirmed by a competent body in Germany. For a degree that means anabin or a ZAB Statement of Comparability; for a vocational qualification it means the ZAB Statement on a Foreign Vocational Qualification, known by its German initials DAB, which certifies that the training was completed, is recognised where you did it, and is equivalent to at least two years of full-time training.

There is one way around this condition. A partial-recognition notice already issued by a German recognition body scores four points and removes the qualification condition entirely. A recognition application that is still pending does neither.

Language: German A1 or English B2. This is a condition for entry to the route, not a scoring criterion. The Act writes the levels as German words rather than letters and defines each one: einfache German is A1, hinreichende is A2, ausreichende is B1, gute is B2. So the gate is A1 German, or B2 English, on the Common European Framework scale.

The certificate has to come from an examining body certified by the Association of Language Testers in Europe or otherwise recognised, and as a rule the exam must be less than a year old. Where you retook a module, the date of the first module you passed is the one that counts. Native English speakers are not exempt from producing a certificate. Some missions exclude specific tests: the German missions in India state that Pearson PTE, Duolingo and TOEFL online are not accepted there.

At least six points. That is the next section.

The points table, checked against the law

The point values are not in a guidance document that can drift. They are written into the Residence Act itself, in the annex that also sets the minimum of six points. Every value below comes from there.

Criterion	Points	What proves it
Partial recognition of your qualification, or compensatory measures required for a licence in a regulated profession	4	The issued notice from the German recognition body. A pending application scores nothing.
German at B2 or higher	3	A certificate from a recognised examining body.
German at B1	2	Same, and only if you are not scoring the B2 band.
German at A2	1	Same, and only if you are not scoring B1 or B2.
English at C1 or higher	1	A certificate. This one adds to your German points instead of replacing them.
At least five years of related professional experience in the last seven	3	Employment certificates describing your duties, a detailed CV, reference letters.
At least two years of related professional experience in the last five	2	Same, and only if you are not scoring the five-year tier.
Your qualification belongs to a shortage occupational group	1	The occupation group, checked against the official list.
You are no older than 35 when you apply	2	Passport.
You are older than 35 and no older than 40 when you apply	1	Passport, and only if you are not scoring the previous line.
At least six months of lawful, uninterrupted residence in Germany in the last five years	1	Old passports with visas and stamps, residence permits, study or work documents. Tourist and family visits do not count.
Your spouse or registered partner also qualifies, applies at the same authority, and intends to enter with you	1	Marriage or partnership certificate and a cross-reference to their application.

Three things about this table decide most cases.

The German bands and the experience tiers are exclusive. You take the highest one you can prove, not all of them. English C1 is the exception and stacks on top.

Shortage occupations here are not the list of jobs that German employers say are hard to fill. The points table borrows a fixed list of occupational groups from elsewhere in the Act: ISCO-08 groups 132, 133, 134, 21, 221, 222, 225, 226, 23 and 25. Those cover certain manager groups, science and engineering, doctors, nursing and midwifery, vets, other health professions, teaching, and ICT. The federal list of shortage occupations gives the four-digit job titles inside each group in English.

A point you cannot document is not a point: both federal pages require evidence or certificates for every criterion you claim. Count only what you can attach.

One official page disagrees with the law here. For the three-point experience tier, the Act and Make it in Germany both say five years within the last seven. The Consular Services Portal overview says three years within the last seven, in its German version as well as its English one. The Act is the rule, so plan on five years, and let the application form and the mission apply their own reading of the criterion when you get there. It is worth knowing about, because a plan built on the portal’s summary can come up a point short.

If you want the arithmetic done for you, this site has a free Opportunity Card points calculator built on the same annex. It runs in your browser, keeps your answers there, and gives you a score and the missing evidence, not a decision.

The money condition

You have to show that you can support yourself for the period you are applying for. The current figure is 1,091 euros net per month, the amount applicable in 2026, and it is the figure on both Make it in Germany and the Consular Services Portal. Twelve months at that rate comes to 13,092 euros, which is the number you will need if you ask for the full year.

Three ways to prove it, and you can combine them.

• A blocked account (Sperrkonto). You choose the provider yourself, you pay bank fees on top of the blocked sum, the account is normally opened for a year, and you can only withdraw a set amount each month. The mission is named as the account beneficiary before you arrive and cannot take your money. The Federal Foreign Office recommends no provider and deleted its old provider list in 2022, so nobody can honestly tell you they are on an official list. The blocked account guide has the rest of the detail, including how the block is lifted if your visa is refused.
• A declaration of commitment (Verpflichtungserklärung). Someone living in Germany with sufficient means takes on financial responsibility for you. They apply for it in person at their local foreigners authority.
• A part-time job in Germany of up to 20 hours a week. If the net salary reaches the monthly figure, that satisfies the condition; if it falls short, a blocked account can cover the difference.

If your funds only cover part of a year, the card can be issued for that shorter period, up to a maximum of twelve months, and extended later in Germany if your situation improves.

The amount changes. It is reviewed and republished, so read the figure on the portal or your mission’s page before you transfer anything. The visa fee itself was 75 euros in the January 2026 federal leaflet, payable in local currency, and some missions work with service providers that charge their own fee on top. For where the monthly figure comes from, each proof route with its conditions, and every fee with the law that sets it, see what the Opportunity Card costs.

The documents

Every application starts from the same base list, the one Make it in Germany publishes in its questions and answers.

1. Valid passport. The German missions in India add the detail most missions apply: issued within the last ten years, with at least two empty pages.
2. Proof of your qualification. The degree or vocational certificate itself. Check whether a German translation is needed.
3. Proof of recognition. On the skilled-worker route, the German recognition notice, or the anabin ratings, or a ZAB Statement of Comparability. On the points route, the evidence that your qualification is state-recognised where you earned it: anabin or a Statement of Comparability for a degree, a DAB for a vocational qualification, or the AHK certificate.
4. Language certificates, where your route or your points need them.
5. Proof of financing. The blocked account confirmation, the declaration of commitment, or the employment contract.
6. Proof of health insurance, valid from the date you enter.
7. The application form. Applying online in the Consular Services Portal generates it. Where a mission still takes applications in person, you fill in the Videx form and bring it.

Then the additions. Anything you claimed points for needs its evidence: employer letters and contracts with exact dates for experience, old passports for a previous stay in Germany, the marriage certificate and your partner’s application reference for the partner point.

Missions add requirements of their own. India, for example, asks for semester mark sheets with a degree, and for confirmation that an Indian degree was studied on site rather than by distance learning. That is why the useful move is to let the Consular Services Portal build your personalised list first: you answer its questions, it works out which route you are on and how many points you have, and it then tells you what to upload. Your mission’s own website carries the complete list, and it is the one that counts.

What nobody on the internet can tell you

The German mission or the foreigners authority decides. Not a calculator, not a consultancy, and not this page. The German missions in India put it plainly on their own document page: submitting the listed documents does not guarantee that a visa is granted, and incomplete documents or refusing a visa interview can end the application.

So treat any site that offers you a guaranteed Opportunity Card, a guaranteed visa, or a “100% eligibility” verdict as telling you something it cannot know. What you can control is whether every condition on your route is met and every point you claim has a document behind it.

Your next step

Work out your route first, since it changes everything else. If a German body has already recognised your qualification as equivalent, you are on the skilled-worker route and you do not need the points table at all.

If you are on the points route, run your situation through the Opportunity Card points calculator on this site to see your score and which document each point depends on. The evidence checklist and next-action planner then turns the criteria you claim into the document behind each one, the condition it has to meet and what to do about it, ordered by how long each takes to arrive. Then start on the recognition evidence. A Statement of Comparability or a DAB is a separate paid application to another authority, so it is the part of the file whose timing you do not control.

If your score comes up short and language is the gap, German is the criterion you can move on your own: A2 is worth one point, B1 two, B2 three. If you are choosing an exam for that, the guides on which B1 exam to take and on Goethe compared with telc are free here and written for people sitting the exam abroad. When the file is ready, the application itself goes through the Consular Services Portal, and how to apply for the Opportunity Card online walks through the account, the uploads, the embassy appointment and the deadlines that end an application early.